CCRC reports on criminal record reforms in 2019

We are pleased to publish our annual report on criminal record reforms enacted during the past calendar year.  This is the fourth in a series of reports since 2016 on new laws aimed at avoiding or mitigating the collateral consequences of arrest and conviction.  This year we have included for the first time a Report Card grading the progress of the most (and least) productive state legislatures in 2019.  The press release accompanying the report is reprinted below:

Report finds record-breaking number of criminal record reforms enacted in 2019

February 17, 2020

Washington, D.C. — The Collateral Consequences Resource Center (CCRC) has released a new report documenting the astonishing number of laws passed in 2019 aimed at promoting reintegration for individuals with a criminal record.  Last year, 43 states, the District of Columbia, and the federal government enacted an extraordinary 153 laws to provide criminal record relief or to alleviate the collateral consequences of arrest and conviction, consequences that may otherwise last a lifetime and frequently have little or no public safety rationale. 

The year 2019 was the most productive legislative year since a wave of “fair chance” reforms began in 2013, a period CCRC has documented in a series of legislative reports (2013-2016, 2017, and 2018). 

CCRC’s 2019 report, titled “Pathways to Reintegration: Criminal Record Reforms in 2019,” is available here.

This report is our first to include a Report Card on how state legislatures performed during the year in advancing the goals of reintegration,” said CCRC Executive Director Margaret Love. “We wanted to recognize New Jersey as Reintegration Champion for having the most consequential legislative record in 2019, including three important new laws authorizing clean slaterecord relief, restoring voting rights, and curbing driver’s license suspensions.

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New 2019 laws reduce workplace barriers for people with a criminal record

This is the second in a series of comments describing some of the 153 laws passed in 2019 restoring rights or delivering record relief.  The full report on 2019 laws is available here.

Consideration of criminal record in occupational licensing and employment

In 2019, 26 states and the federal government enacted 42 separate laws limiting consideration of criminal record in either employment or occupational licensing, or both.  For the first time, Congress joined the lively national conversation about the need to reduce record-related barriers in the workplace that are inefficient and unfair.

Regulation of licensing accounted for 30 of these new laws, continuing a trend begun in 2017 that has transformed the licensing policy landscape and opened opportunities in regulated professions for many thousands of people.  As explained in our report on 2018 laws, these licensing reforms are particularly important in supporting reintegration, since studies have shown that more than 25% of all jobs in the United States require a government-issued license.

The new wave of licensing reforms resurrects a progressive approach to occupational opportunity that dates from the 1970s, and it has been strongly influenced by model legislation developed by the Institute of Justice (IJ), a libertarian public interest law firm, and the National Employment Law Project (NELP), a workers’ rights research and advocacy group.  Despite their origin in differing regulatory philosophies, the IJ and NELP model laws reflect a similar approach:  they limit the kinds of records that may result in disqualification, rejecting vague “good moral character” and other criteria irrelevant to competence,  insisting that individual denials be grounded in findings of rehabilitation and public safety with rigorous due process guarantees, and making agency procedures more transparent and accountable.  In the IJ model, applicants can seek binding preliminary determinations of qualification, and agency compliance is monitored by disclosure and reporting requirements.

The new licensing laws borrow features of the comprehensive schemes enacted in 2018 in states like Indiana and New Hampshire, though in 2019 most states took a more cautious approach to reining in licensing agencies.  Some states (like Mississippi and Nevada) enacted generally applicable laws for the first time, while others returned to the task begun in previous legislative sessions.  Arizona, for example, has enacted significant licensing reforms for three years running, while Texas enacted no fewer than five separate licensing measures in 2019 alone—two of them of general application and quite significant, and the other three opening opportunities in health care occupations to people who may have been denied them earlier in life.  Arkansas, North Carolina and Oklahoma significantly expanded existing licensing schemes.

Compared to occupational licensing, 2019 was not a banner year for new fair employment laws.  Still, ten states and the federal government enacted a total of 14 new measures to promote opportunities in the workplace.  Most of the new laws continue the expansion of “ban-the-box” laws in public and private employment, including a significant new law covering employment by federal agencies and contractors.

The only 2019 enactment that directly prohibits consideration of criminal record in employment is Illinois’ extension of its Human Rights Act to bar employers and housing providers from considering arrests not resulting in conviction and juvenile adjudications.  Since 2019 was also a year that saw doubt cast on the legality of the EEOC’s extension of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to cover employment discrimination based on criminal record, more states may step up in coming years.  As of the end of 2019, only four states (California, Hawaii, New York, and Wisconsin) include criminal record discrimination in their general fair employment schemes, and all but California’s law date from the 1970s.  Colorado, Connecticut, and Nevada have, like Illinois, more recently prohibited some employers from considering certain criminal records, but those prohibitions are not integrated into a broader nondiscrimination law.

The new 2019 licensing and employment laws are described in more detail below, and can be viewed as they interact with other relief provisions in the relevant state profiles from the CCRC Restoration of Rights Project.

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